Blog 13

Learning Through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher
Music is such an important part of most people’s lives. It is so much a part of it that we probably don’t even realize the extent to which it impacts us. Have you ever thought about all the places you hear music and why you hear music? There is music everywhere you go. I was so tickled when I found this article that I had to use it for my next blog. I was hoping to find something about maternity leave, but try as I might, I couldn’t find anything. As you are reading this I am in the hospital having my 2nd child. So I thought it would be interesting to do some research on maternity leave policies in schools. I am on a sabbatical this school year so I don’t have to worry about taking time of for the birth of my child, but with my first child I was so disgusted with my schools’ leave policy. But, I digress. No need to get into that now that I found an even better, less aggravating topic!
The article “Learning through Music; Practical Suggestions for the Elementary Teacher” brings up how easy it is to incorporate music into a plethora of lesson plans, and rather simply at that. It doesn’t take much to create a little ditty to help remember some facts from a lesson. It always seems like in my music classes I am thinking of ways to cross curriculum via my lessons. Now it is time for other disciplines to cross curriculum with music. As I was looking for articles about this I came across this awesome video. You just have to take the time to view it. It is two guys that have taken valuable content from lessons and put it to rap. As they claim, it is a form of the SchoolHouse Rock of old, with a new hip hop twist.

Tina Jordan, the author of the article came up with a list of 5 ways to help non-music teachers incorporate music into ‘regular’ lessons.
1. Music as Transition/Classroom Management – In tradition of the “clean up” song in pre-school, music can signal students to attend to a task in a specific time frame. With Yakity Yak Don’t Talk Back, students are enthusiastic while they “pick up the papers and the trash” before transitioning to the next subject or leaving for the day. Using age appropriate songs, students of all ages can listen to musical cues to follow procedures in much the same way.
2. Music to Calm and Attend– Music can soothe, stimulate, or excite the students in your classroom to attend to learning. Soft background instrumentals can calm students as they enter the learning environment after recess or as they come excited for the morning routine. Using Good Day Sunshine by the Beatles, for instance, could energize and motivate students who are lagging and need an extra “oomph” to start their day.
3. Music to Build Community – Songs can create a since of cohesiveness and cooperation through a shared love of music. Brooke Cherry, a third grade teacher, challenged her students to nominate and vote on a theme song for their class. They overwhelmingly chose We are the Champions to help motivate and encourage each other during their first experience with the state assessment and the rigorous curriculum they felt they would experience that year. She used their song to enhance her writing curriculum as her students wrote about, defined, and described qualities of a champion. As they shared these personal perspectives with each other, they devised a class pledge to remind them to strive toward their shared set of goals.
4. Music to Enhance Creativity- Music unlocks a plethora of creativity and inspiration to students. For example, Betty Smith, a first grade teacher, uses the song What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong to arouse her first graders to think how they would imagine a “wonderful world.” Each of her students was given lines of the song to mentally visualize and then illustrate its beautiful theme through art. Fellow teachers, parents and colleagues were impressed with the complexity of their thinking as they show-cased their creativity and their interpretation of the song’s message. She even used different versions of the song to demonstrate how different artists could produce a different image and meaning to the lyrics simply by using different rhythms and vocal styles. With the depth of thinking in this activity, Mrs. Smith reached every level of Bloom's Taxonomy. Powerful indeed!
5. Music to Support ESL Learners- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Using music bridges the culture gap in the classroom. Regardless of race, religion, or language all enjoy and can relate through music. Holly Zalenski, an ESL teacher, used Christmas Carols of different regions to introduce vocabulary and American culture. Using the Christmas carols also enhanced her reading instruction as the students searched for the main idea, or “the gist” as she called it, of the song’s printed lyrics. Students repeatedly used the printed lyrics to allow students the time to work on reading fluency effectively. Ms. Zalenski confirmed, “Music was our common thread when the spoken word often becomes lost in translation.”

Here are just a few ways that I have seen my fellow teachers use music to help their lessons:
My Kindergarten, First and Second graders came into music class one day with a song to teach me. They had been studying the planets in our solar system and they had a catchy tune to learn and remember the names of the planets. They were so excited to sing it for me. This was at the time Pluto was demoted as a planet. So for our spring concert we sang their planet song and a song I had already planned on doing about the plight of Pluto.
Who can forget “Fifty Nifty United States” It is the song that lists, in alphabetical order, the names of all the United States. As a music teacher I have gotten a lot of mileage out of this one.
You don’t even have to be good at music to incorporate it into your classes. Trust me, I AM a music teacher and little kids absolutely don’t care what you sound like. They just love to sing and use music. If you have any ways you have found fun and innovative to use music in your classroom feel free to share!


Reference
Jordan, T. (2009, July 30). Learning through music; practical suggestions for the elementary teacher. Retrieved from http://www.edarticle.com/k-12-subject-areas/the-arts/learning-through-music%3B-practical-suggestions-for-the-elementary-teacher.html on November 14, 2009